Gov. John Kasich launches budget collaboration among colleges and universities

Lynn Ischay, The Plain DealerGov. John Kasich today announced that a consortium of higher education leaders will report to him by this Thanksgiving with a plan to reduce the cost of college education that he can include in the next state budget.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Facing ever-rising tuition costs, a slow-growing economy and conservative budgeting, Gov. John Kasich on Tuesday asked the state's college and university presidents to help him rewrite Ohio's higher education funding formula.

They've offered similar help before. Last year the Republican governor asked Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee to pull the presidents, including those at community colleges, together to figure out how to divvy up a pot of state cash for capital improvement projects on their campuses.

Now comes the bigger challenge: making college more affordable. Kasich worries the state's investment of taxpayer dollars into Ohio's higher education system too often yields paltry results. Look at the low graduation rates on campuses around the state for evidence of that concern.

"We all know that we can all do better on graduation rates and there's been some movement on creating a new formula," Kasich said, surrounded by school presidents at his Statehouse ceremonial office. "We hope we can speed up the process so that we can fund higher education based on graduation rather than based on enrollment."

Kasich asked the presidents to come up with some funding ideas centered on financial incentives and bonuses for schools based on graduation rates. While many Ohio public schools have reported higher enrollment figures in recent years and drawing more tuition dollars, they are not necessarily graduating more students.

The governor also asked the presidents to consider other cost-saving options such as privatizing campus projects and sharing services.

OSU's Gee, who Kasich tapped to lead the task force that worked on the capital budget, has again been appointed by the governor to lead this effort.

"We appreciate the opportunity and we will not fail," Gee promised Kasich, adding that the school presidents were on board with the governor's belief that better graduation rates in the short-term will help boost Ohio's economic development record over the long-term.

Gee said the presidents will have a proposal to the governor by Thanksgiving.

According to a recent Ohio Board of Regents report, which calculated the percentage of freshmen who entered in 2004 and graduated within six years -- not four, Cleveland State graduated just 30 percent of those students. Of Ohio's 13 four-year public universities, only Shawnee State and Central State universities were lower.

Still, the idea of basing funding on graduation rates as opposed to enrollment does not bother CSU president Ronald Berkman, who attended Tuesday's meeting in Columbus.

"I'm not concerned about that at all because my mantra has been that we have to do this whether it is funding driven or not," Berkman told The Plain Dealer after the meeting. "We have to do it because it is the right thing to do for those students who enter the university, to do everything we can to create a path for them where they can graduate and find their way into the workplace.

"That's regardless of funding," he said. "If funding incentivizes it, then all the better."

The Kasich administration opened only a small portion of Tuesday's meeting to the media, enough for all the presidents to nod in agreement as the governor and Gee spoke.

But during the closed-door portion of the meeting, administration officials say it was made clear to the presidents that Kasich intends to offer up another tight, conservative budget early next year that probably won't have as much money for higher education as the school leaders would hope.

The administration announced earlier this summer that it would enjoy a healthy year-to-year carryover of state revenues and had replenished the state's drained resources, and the two accounts combined totaled about $1 billion.

Still, Kasich prefers to sit on that money in anticipation of higher-than-projected Medicaid costs over the next biennium and cautions that while Ohio is rebounding, the recovery is slow. Plus the governor is aiming to produce a personal income tax cut sometime next year as he heads into a re-election campaign.

So, in short, the presidents were told that it would be better for them to come up with ideas for cost savings rather than have solutions thrust upon them by the administration.

"I'm going to let them explore wherever they want to go," Kasich said, adding that he did not want to offer too much direction to Gee, as long as their efforts remained largely focused on addressing graduation rates.

The presidents said they were up to the challenge.

"I truly think this is an incredibly unique opportunity for university presidents to kind of frame an agenda that will drive reform, not just drive funding," said Berkman, "I think it is about driving reform."

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